Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2016-05-09

Attendance

Robert A. Boisselle present · Ward 4 Alderman; Donald L. Conn Jr. present · President/Ex-officio Member; Scott M. Forbes present · Ward 7 Alderman; Gail Infurna absent · Vice Chairman; Jennifer L. Lemmerman present · Ward 2 Alderman; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis absent · Alderman at Large; Monica C. Medeiros present · Alderman at Large; Peter D. Mortimer present · Chairman; John N. Tramontozzi present · Ward 1 Alderman; Francis X. Wright Jr. present · Ward 3 Alderman; Michael P. Zwirko present · Alderman at Large

Agenda

1. Call to Order (5:50)
2. Public Participation (7:15)
3. Orders
4. ORDER-2016-158 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2017 in the amount of 75,328,574.79 (Seventy-Five Million, Three Hundred Twenty-Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Seventy-Four Dollars and Seventy-Nine Cents) (8:08)
5. ORDER-2016-173 : Reauthorization of the Melrose Veterans Events Revolving Fund #2607 for FY 2017 (48:59)
6. ORDER-2016-171 : Reauthorization of Police Department False Alarm Revolving Fund # 2665 for FY17 (1:34:00)
7. ORDER-2016-170 : Reauthorization of Inspection Services Revolving Account #2658 for FY2017 (1:38:13)
8. Adjournment (2:34:40)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 9, 2016 Aldermanic Chamber Budget Hearing 7:30 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Peter D. Mortimer Chairman Present Gail M. Infurna Vice Chairman Absent Michael P. Zwirko Alderman at Large Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Absent Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present In Attendance: Mayor Dolan, Director of Community Services Mike Lindstrom, Commission on Women representative Gail Cass-Fertig , Police Chief Mike Lyle, City Auditor/CFO Patrick Dello Russo, District Veterans Service Officer Alicia Reddin, IT Assistant Director Colby Cousens, Chief Assessor Chris Wilcock, Director of Inspectional Services Paul Johnson

ORDER-2016-158 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2017 in the amount of 75,328,574.79 (Seventy-Five Million, Three Hundred Twenty-Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Seventy-Four Dollars and Seventy-Nine Cents) Appropriations Committee

ORDER-2016-173 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of the Melrose Veterans Events Revolving Fund #2607 for FY 2017 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 6/9/2016 5:56 PM Minutes Appropriations Committee May 9, 2016

ORDER-2016-171 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of Police Department False Alarm Revolving Fund # 2665 for FY17 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen

ORDER-2016-170 Revolving Fund/Reauthorization Reauthorization of Inspection Services Revolving Account #2658 for FY2017 Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 6/9/2016 5:56 PM

Transcript

▶ 5:35 Peter D. Mortimer: Second. Second by Alderman Zwirko. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Stay tuned for appropriations. Finance Committee's concluded. Stay tuned for appropriations. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is Monday, May 9th, 7.32 in the evening. This is the Committee on Appropriations. I am your chairman, Peter Mortimer. We are joined by other aldermen in attendance, Michael Zwirko, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Wright, Alderman Lemmerman, Alderman Forbes, and President Kahn. This is a committee of the whole. All members of the Board of Aldermen are members of this committee. This meeting is being recorded by MMTV. be rebroadcast and a dvd is available for people to see you can also stream it from the city website

▶ 7:15 Peter D. Mortimer: or the mm tv website motion open the floor for public participation mr chairman Thorp a motion by alderman forbes to open the floor for public participation duly seconded by alderman Boisselle anyone right here for public participation now is your time now now is the time you would want to come forward i believe she's speaking on an item this evening to the commissioner oh she's just coming for the budget nothing to say i'm sorry i thought you had something to say say uh outside your budget but you're gonna you're gonna save it for when your budget comes up beautiful thank you alderman lemon we are still working on the city budget this is the season of the year a motion to close public participation thank you alderman

▶ 8:08 Peter D. Mortimer: Alderman Tramontozzi? Second. Thorp been a motion to close public participation by Alderman Tramontozzi, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is closed. The first budget order that we have this evening is budget number 121. It is the department of the mayor's office in the amount of $915.82. Motion to suspend the rules so we can hear from all public officials. Second. We have a motion to suspend the rules by Alderman Forbes, duly seconded by Alderman Lemmerman. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the rules are suspended so we may hear from the department heads and city officials. Good evening, your honor.

▶ 8:59 Hi, everybody. Mayor Dolan. Thank you. And joined by his Chief Operating Officer, Michael Lindstrom. evening sir thank you everybody the mayor's office consists of three individuals myself Mike Lindstrom in Bridget Allison Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I'd also like to thank many of the volunteers that help that staff my office in particular Tony Gilotti who's been with my office volunteering for 15 years as well as john cornetta who's also been in my office for close to 15 years volunteering i have many others that assist the office in many functions including many interns that also over the years have done a tremendous job the proposed fy 16 mayor's office budget represents level funding and all light items outside of salary and wages selling wages line item is up due to

▶ 9:58 the 53rd week and in recognition of what we talked about last year uh we are moving one quarter of bridget allison's salary back to the mayor's budget which was located last year in water and sewer as a part of the new water replacement program that increased calls in our request volume the year before that it was in recreation when we went through a major change in recreation so bridget's full salary is now in the mayor's budget which is uh the full responsibility which she holds now on this year saw the continued success of social media to engage in dialogue with residents the city twitter account which has run out of my office has grown to almost 2500 followers in addition to the mayor's blog which regularly sees 1 000 hits per day for posts we

▶ 10:47 have also introduced the visual budget to give residents a new visual tool to explore the city budget and we also look to this summer enhancing the the click c-click fix program to give residents a easier a better experience in terms of identifying problems and sending them to department of public works for fixing in fy16 we're able to provide a long list of community events that i believe builds neighborhood community spirit introduces new residents to the community i have known people to come to me and said they did not live in the city once they participated in these events they chose melrose in which to live some of the most important events that we ran this year included the new birth to five new parent expo which

▶ 11:33 recognizes the many new families that have lived here we have continued the second grade library card program which every second grader in the city goes to the library learns how to use the library and gets their first public document outside of their birth certificate, which is a library card. And I always have felt that that is very, very important. We continued the Four Corners Music Festival, the Downtown Summer Stroll, which has been universally praised as a wonderful idea for a suburban community, the Healthy Melrose Fair that took place this weekend, which has only grown, improving not only the public health but supporting local businesses. We paid for the Main Street Flags, which will go up as Memorial Day approaches.

▶ 12:14 the visual budget the kindergarten reception which is an introduction to new children to our public schools the elementary science fairs which now are participa now have participation in every single elementary school at record numbers the memorial day parade which is in the next few weeks the melrose kids club which usually averaged 50 to 100 residents per friday we ran focus groups for senior citizen senior citizen needs assessment as well as the intergenerational spring fling Thank You mayor Dolan president Khan please yeah Thank You mr. chairman so mayor the only significant increase in your budget here is is the salary line and so people at home understand it's because Thorp going to be 53 pay periods during this upcoming fiscal year

▶ 13:04 correct so instead of having the usual budget based on 52 salary periods we 53 and i've been asking everybody uh and just to be consistent um are all all salaries and compensation from your office are covered in this budget now now they are with bridget moving over from water and sewer to this budget is 100 so nobody else is allocated to anything else this is the actual uh salary and compensation plan for the mayor for the man's office and can you explain what the community outreach uh line is for the for people at home who might not know what it is Sure, the community outreach is to fund all the programs that I mentioned, any expenses that we have for those come out of that fund, anything from the downtown summer stroll to

▶ 13:50 Monica C. Medeiros: the Healthy Melrose Fair, as I said before, the music festivals, the Kids Club, which is for the entertainers, the kindergarten receptions for the rec kids, the science fairs that we helped around this year so they're all programs that directly we feel benefit citizens of Melrose thank you President Kahn Alderman Medeiros please thank you thank you very much I just wanted to say in particular thank you I am glad to see Bridget's Allery move fully over to to your office I believe that's the appropriate place for I know I moved to cut that last year out of water and syrup because I felt this was more appropriate so you know I do think you need the support and I'm glad to see we remembered that and just you

▶ 14:44 know also say we all appreciate these events and I had a great time at healthy Melrose and I know Mike was there working hard and all those events help help build our community and keep the sense thank you thank you alderman Medeiros seeing no Parliament's work oh please thank you mr. chairman thank you mr. mayor and Mike for being here this evening I just had one question on the line item with dues and membership I I had the benefit of attending my first Massachusetts Municipal Association seminar and I think it's an invaluable seminar to go to and conference that they hold every January and where people can share ideas about what cities and towns are doing innovatively I was just curious for that line item is that something that gets covered in the

▶ 15:26 budget things of those memberships yes Thorp three major memberships one is MMA which we benefit from greatly greatly second is the Metropolitan Area Planning Council which is all we also benefit from the third is the Metro mayor's coalition which we meet once a month we met today which includes the all the urban core chaired by my mayor Corotonia Somerville I'm the vice chair includes mayor of Boston all the way to the mayor Newton to the town administrator in Winthrop and it basically we identify issues important to the urban core to advocate to advocate for everything from increased today we talked about increased flights over many areas due to the extension expansion of terminal E at the airport which is international flights luckily I have not heard any

▶ 16:15 complaints in Mars but it is a major issue right now in Winthrop and and and even in medford to forming a committee on reform of the jlmc to shannon grant which is something in the budget that allows police departments to work together for opioid as well as gang communication throughout from police departments uh throughout the area so it's very three very worthwhile groups i think yeah you had mentioned the massachusetts area planning council i think that they're they're assisting with the master plan correct yeah master plan they do a great amount of work with our energy. They do a tremendous amount of help with rezoning when we did the corridor in which President Kahn and the planning board

▶ 16:57 Peter D. Mortimer: that we had a committee set up for from Washington Street all the way now across the whole city. They provide a lot of support for communities like Maurer's that don't have a large number of staff unlike some you know it's like Somerville or Cambridge. They do a great job. Thank you for that I appreciate the background on those three organizations thank you move the bottom line we have a motion to move the bottom line on the mayor's bought budget made by alderman Boisselle second duly seconded by alderman Lemmerman all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none thank you our mayor would you stay right there for a second I think we'll do the community events the mayor has already addressed because I didn't see Alderman Boisselle highlighter the mayor has

▶ 17:48 Peter D. Mortimer: already touched on the community events budget which follows kind of tied right into his office a small dollar amount Thorp ocean to move the bottom line we have a motion from Alderman Boisselle to move the bottom line on the community events budget duly seconded by Alderman's work oh on discussion we have alderman medeiros thank you um i guess i what's the the difference between we have the community outreach line in the mayor's budget and then we have the community events line so i can speak to this the the community events line item that you're looking at right now is simply for the memorial day parade um the six thousand dollars and then the two thousand uh celebration for the total is also uh for the parade the total cost of the parade is ten thousand to eleven thousand

▶ 18:34 Peter D. Mortimer: we get 8 000 from here and then we supplement the rest through either private donation or through our our office budget this is simply for the parade and memorial and the all the events of that day and weekend thank you appreciate that thanks thank you alderman Medeiros uh the motion has been made by alderman boisselle duly seconded by alderman Zwirko seeing no further discussion all in favor any opposed hearing none this budget is approved as well thank you mr mayor thank you Thank you, Mr. Lindstrom. Thank you. I'll stay for the women's. The next budget we have before us is Budget 542. It is the Commission on Women in the amount of $2,000. At long last. Thank you, gentlemen and ladies. I represent the newly started Melrose Commission on Women.

▶ 19:34 We're excited. As a matter of fact, most of the officers are here tonight with us, and we've talked about the $2,000 that is before you, what we could do. We could probably spend 10 or 15, but I know that's not in the budget, so we'll put that to next year. We're talking about the most important thing is we want a presence, and some of us will be marching in the parade. will not be able to attend but we want a presence at the Victorian Fair and we're looking to share a table we've identified a few of the participants historical participants and see if we can do that to minimize our costs but we're looking to have something maybe a contest or to have little flyers to hand out we talked about little buttons that say ask me about Commission on women

▶ 20:31 we're going to have a questionnaire a short one to find out what do the residents of Melrose really want and many of them may not know we exist even though the publicity has been abound by all the members of the free press and all of you and the mayor but little things like that do cost some money so we don't have an actual budget what we're going to spend the money on we are meeting as an official first meeting in on the 18th of May since the first meeting was just a short meeting getting established and letting to know who is going to be doing what so we several of the members said let's have our real first meeting in May and we're going to do that it will be part of the agenda it will be publicized in all the places it needs to be so we will at that time

▶ 21:27 have a better understanding of what we would like to identify different dollars for for different projects very good thank you would you have anything to add to that mr. man no I thought they might be nice some assistance they don't all right the rationale for $2,000 it's something they could start with and obviously support them in any way we can 10 for next year just the bottom line second we have a motion to move the bottom line made by alderman boys L duly seconded by alderman lemmerman seeing no discussion Oh alderman Medeiros please okay so I very much appreciate your enthusiasm this is something where I I feel that this is sort of to me in in you know where the role of government is this is not exactly it we've created this

▶ 22:27 Monica C. Medeiros: Commission I think I mentioned this during the discussion that I'm not really comfortable with funding this right now especially where you guys have really just kind of got off the ground and don't have something farm and set in stone but I know like in a short while we're gonna hear from chief Lyle and we know Thorp Thorp no like Narcan factored into our budget and you know we're just asking parents to pay activity fees and user fees and I can't personally justify knows a small amount but doing that right now and I think that there is a lot of enthusiasm in the community for women there was just you know the Melrose run for women yesterday I think we'll hear later from Veterans Affairs about Operation Respect very successful and I think that this is the

▶ 23:18 Monica C. Medeiros: kind of things that I think there is the will for perhaps some donations and you know if I'm gonna you know vote against moving this bottom line tonight I do think that you know Thorp perhaps I think there is a will there for that so you know I would suggest in the coming months maybe it would be appropriate to come before us for the creation of a donation account or you know maybe even and if you think a revolving fund but you know right now I can't justify I understand through the chair I'll allow a little civil discourse generally we don't do that but I will allow it at this time okay I apologize no that's quite all right please proceed okay is one of the things is publicity and we've all talked about doing it in a very inexpensive way such as using our own

▶ 24:12 printers at home where we can but until we let the residents of melrose both men women children and seniors know that we exist how can we fundraise we've talked about that at our first meeting what can we do to fundraise what organization can we partner with to fundraise and we all agree that that's a good way to go but we need some money to start we can't start knocking on doors and saying we need five dollars from you because we're newly created and people will look at us like who are you so we do need sort of like a little seed money you can do a lot with all the moment arrows I'll let you have the last word if you like go ahead if you like all the moon deers I think you can do a lot with a little I think you know it's great to work to

▶ 25:04 Monica C. Medeiros: look at you know department partnering up with another group for instance for the table I know that the table fees do cost money but they're not you know not extraordinary and you know don't Thorp Thorp many ways including the the mayor's blog and which we just heard gets you know a thousand views per day so I mean Thorp there are things out there that are tools that hopefully are available so need some suggestions offline okay can we count on you for a Thank you, Alderman Medeiros. Alderman Zwirko, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the time. I actually was surprised. I appreciate your comments, Alderman Medeiros, on this line item. I actually do think that this is exactly the role of government in these types of commissions, especially for outreach. I

▶ 25:52 Michael P. Zwirko: am somewhat surprised that it actually was below, I noticed, funding for the Melrose Human Rights Commission, which hopefully on Thursday we will be approving as well. But I do know that when generally you start something, there are some high upstart costs, and then those tend to tail off over time you know like if you're building a house you need your materials but then you don't need those materials in year two and I think to the point that has been raised this evening they need to get off the ground they have their charge they want to do some community outreach the Melrose Victorian Fair is not free there are some ideas that they have that they want to set running I think that this is good money to get them started I'm very

▶ 26:26 Michael P. Zwirko: in favor of this commission and I'm looking forward to the work that they'll be producing I like the makeup of the Commission and I appreciate the hard work that the city's done to get this moving so I will be supporting this bottom line and I do think that it's a nominal amount at best I actually wish that it was funded a little bit more but I'm supporting it as is thank you that's only comment I had Thank You alderman's work Oh president Khan please yeah I supported this order I'm gonna support the $2,000 budgeted line this year but in all seriousness I didn't vote for this order thinking that it was going to to evolve into a twenty five or thirty thousand dollar budget I don't think that's appropriate the Human Rights Commission gets by on three thousand

▶ 27:09 dollars a year they do very good work places like the Liquor Commission have one thousand dollars so I supported the order voted in favor of it I'm in favor of this appropriation but just I'll at least be back next year unless the voters the voters may kick me out after that but when I'm back here next year I I don't want to see some large increase in this. I think this is reasonable. Seven, eight, $10,000 is not reasonable and I would not support it. And with all due respect to the all across the aisle, I would not support raising all these other boards and commissions budgets either. We as a city have to make choices. We don't have unlimited resources. Sometimes if you're not careful with the small dollars, you have trouble with the big dollar amounts.

▶ 28:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you, President Kahn. Alderman Lemmerman, please. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say thank you, first of all, for coming down tonight to speak to us, particularly something you haven't done before and having met once. I'm sure that it's not easy to come down and to speak on this item. I don't have a question. I just have a quick comment. I was I had the privilege of being there for the first organizational meeting of this commission there was a lot of discussion and excitement about what kind of activities this commission may be able to do for the city but as we all know excitement alone is not all it takes to get your name out there and to get these types of events going and the publicity alone as was mentioned is

▶ 28:46 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: important I just also want to reiterate that during that discussion that I was able to watch there there was a lot of eye toward doing as much as the commissioners could do to keep it affordable and to be careful with the dollars that the city would be providing them should they get this funding so I know that they're aware of that and that it's been part of the discussion and I appreciate that and I hope it continues and I do think that this is important to get this commission going so I'm looking forward to supporting it Thank You alderman lemmerman are seeing no further alderman wishing to be heard a motion has been made to move the bottom line on the Commission on women by alderman boy sell seconded by alderman's work oh all in favor please say aye aye any opposed

▶ 29:32 Peter D. Mortimer: we have eight in favor one opposed this order for the Commission on women will be recommended to the full board for passage thank you thank you very much the next budget we have before us is budget 296 it is the budget on parking parking enforcement and the parking department in the amount of sixty four thousand twenty five dollars and zero cents mr. de la rousseau will you be representing the city on this order tonight oh the chief Lyle very good sir thank you no no worries tonight he's unavailable I can tell you that the police department issued approximately 3,500 parking tickets last year bringing in approximately a hundred and three thousand dollars I don't have the information as far as train station revenue but I will say that they average

▶ 30:49 about forty five hundred dollars a month in train station revenue that's all I Oh, I have. Thank you very much, Chief Lyle. Motion to move the bottom line. Alderman Boisselle made a motion to move the bottom line. Is there a second before we proceed with discussion? Second. Seconded by Alderman Forbes. On discussion, President Kahn, please. Yeah, I think my questions would probably be more directed towards Mr. DelaRusso than Chief Lyle. Mr. DelaRusso, would you join us, sir, please? I note that we're paying $18,000 again for the lease of the spaces in the lot, the St. Mary's lot. St. Mary's lot, yes. Is that correct? And are we in a lease now, if we know? Do you know how far in we are to the current lease?

▶ 31:47 Through the chair, I do not. I would have to inquire from the city solicitor. And I guess my question may be rhetorical, but maybe not. I think we've been leasing this space for 18 years, 19 years. Is the plan just to continue this arrangement indefinitely? And, you know, I know parking is a premium. I know we voted last year to acquire some property to make additional parking. but um i mean is there any is there any view towards phasing this out replacing it it just it seems like we're over time we're going to pay an awful lot of money for parking spaces again i can uh inquire yeah city solicitor because i have not been involved in a discussion yeah if you could i'd be interested in response to that because uh i think unfortunately i was

▶ 32:54 Peter D. Mortimer: here at the genesis of this arrangement back in 19 i don't even know what's been a long time but it's a long time ago and it seems to have gone on for an awful long time that's all i have right now thank you president khan uh seeing no further alderman wishing to be heard a motion to move the bottom line has been made by alderman Boisselle and seconded by alderman forbes all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none opposed opposed we have one opposed uh eight in favor want to post this order will be recommended to the board for passage next we have the veterans chief we'll see you later on in the evening we will once again some more orders the next order we have before us is the veterans commission good evening um good evening we know you're filling in

▶ 33:47 Peter D. Mortimer: uh for brian mclean who's been activated on active duty uh would you like to introduce yourself and and make a brief statement yes hi good evening everyone thank you for having me my name is Alicia Redden some of us have met I've been working in the vet's office for a little over a year and I have currently stepped into the role of interim director of the district covering Melrose Wakefield and Saugus while Ryan McLean is on active duty orders for the next six to eight months guesstimated and the bottom line for this budget is five hundred and seventy thousand six hundred and ninety five dollars and 66 cents would you like to say anything about the budget I'll proceed directly to questions and

▶ 34:30 answers I would like to say a few words if that's okay please do yes so over the past 12 months we've been able to do a ton in the community we have a new not a new outreach initiative in schools but we've definitely kicked that up in the past year we're working very closely with the middle school as well as the high school and we try to have as much of a presence as possible in all of our elementary schools including encouragement in all of our Memorial Day and Veterans Day observances and we go in to speak to the students as much as possible that's just a piece of what we do we also run a food market here out of the town out of the city that feeds approximately 60 families from Melrose and over 150 from Saugus and Wakefield we've also worked very closely with the

▶ 35:13 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Melrose substance abuse prevention coalition that is a very large issue in the veteran community so we've made it a point to team up with them as much as possible and work with them and so that's probably all I have to say for now so any questions would be great Thank You miss Redding I you know what I've so far I've seen quickly I think it was alderman lemmerman alderman's work Oh and president caught Thank You mr. chairman you're welcome thank you very much for coming down and thank you for everything that you do for our city and for our veterans just a couple of quick questions on the items here so I see a a small cut but a cut in the veterans benefit line are we serving fewer people or is that what's what's the reason for the change there so we have seen a

▶ 35:57 slight drop in the amount of veterans that we're serving in the community but that's due to increased case management some veterans are moving on to other more permanent types of benefits such as Social Security VA disability payments their claims are coming through and they are no longer eligible for chapter 115 benefits so it's actually a good thing that we're seeing a slight dip although we are as you can see in our budget with the requested increase to keep our outreach budget we are still working very closely with the housing authorities to try to gather up what we think is an untapped population right so you you actually have veterans moving on to maybe more sustainable or robust benefits that's great and there is a significant increase in the mileage line

▶ 36:40 item yes absolutely so part of outreach is going out and attending different seminars different meetings traveling throughout the district and something that we realized in the past 12 months is that previously we weren't really submitting mileage accurately we weren't submitting our total mileage so we're seeing that we're actually doing quite a bit more outreach than we were filing for so once we started really putting in our full mileage we were going through it quite quickly I think at one point we went through our entire mileage by the the end of the second quarter so at this point we've hit our maximum for the fiscal year and now it's at the point where we're kind of struggling to cover

▶ 37:20 Michael P. Zwirko: travel travel costs and so that's why we have requested the increase to ensure that we have the financial capability to continue that outreach for our staff in the office thank you very much thank you all the Malama win alderman Suarco please Thank You mr. chairman thank you for your time tonight also your service appreciate that so I had a couple of questions I know that we do benefits outreach not only within the city we also you had mentioned Saugus and Wakefield correct so does this budget indicate any money's appropriations or funds that we receive from those municipalities and if so could you break that down for us so the way that we work so things like mileage and outreach are completely separate those do not become combined outreach

▶ 38:04 done in Melrose is built through Melrose outreach done in Saugus or Wakefield is built through their respective accounting offices when it comes to our salaries and benefits both saugus and wakefield are responsible for 33.33 percent and they allot that to the city we send them an invoice out of accounting and they pay that on a monthly basis you can actually tick and tie it back as to where the services are rendered yep okay so what happens is the number that you're seeing is our full salaries and our full benefits for the year but it can be broken out fairly simply um and i i wasn't sure if that was included but i can get this to you as well um 34 000 comes from weakfield 34 from saugus and it all ticks and ties in right and those um

▶ 38:48 those payments and those invoices are all up in accounting you're all housed here correct i mean your office is here in melrose so if you're doing outreach or if you're servicing veterans that need services in mel excuse me saugus or wakefield they would be calling melrose city hall no we have an office located in each location that's great so the way that it was when ryan was here was that he was primarily in melrose and i was in wakefield and saugus things have shifted a little bit and wakefield and melrose are manageable together so i continue to cover those two and we've brought on a temporary vso to cover saugus so it's fairly in it's it's fairly rare that i have to travel to saugus but it's really more for the high level auditing budget

▶ 39:29 type items so what we're doing now is if I'm in I'm in sorry try to keep my schedule straight Tuesdays and Thursdays are Wakefield days but for me it's just Tuesday now and so our sagas person covers Thursday so it's only one day a week that I'm traveling back and forth they can contact Melrose and I can travel back and forth it just depends on the needs we've tried to keep it as fluid as possible between all three cities or all three municipalities and both VSOs and we also have administrative support covering in each location so that Thorp pretty much always someone in the office thank you for that and I do have one or two more questions so I know that with respect to the salaries I can see how it's being applied across other municipalities but I was wondering

▶ 40:14 in terms of the benefits that I would imagine that Thorp some sort of reimbursement that we get from the state for all of the benefits that we at least sign them up for or the chapter 115 correct correct so chapter 115 benefits are reimbursed at 75% and that comes back to the city's general fund as far as once people are moved on to more permanent benefits our benefit number drops therefore our reimbursement changes but we stay reimbursed at 75% as long as we remain in compliance which we have been since forming the district and keeping the offices staffed and things like that so there is funds that comes back to yes city I have that I really do I'm not lying on a monthly basis we send out approximately $30,000 in benefits and we brought bring back in

▶ 41:07 approximately 25 so it's reading mr. de la Rousseau seems to have thanks further elucidation he's much better with the numbers I'm good with the people finally respectfully I'm through the chair thank you for FY 17 three hundred and ten thousand one ninety eight and it is in the material we did provide the board I think was actually all the men boys although asked that we included so it's actually up over six thousand two hundred and fifty one dollars some last year so we do get that back and it comes right into the city as she indicated and Thank you. The last question that I have, I noticed that in the line for the 2016 actual is just under $310,000, yet it's projected to be an additional $125,000 from there with

▶ 42:03 only seven weeks remaining in the fiscal year. I would imagine that based on previous budget years, you will hit that or come close to hitting that figure. What exactly is — where is that lump coming from because with the small amount of time left i'm just curious as to what that's going to go to there should be and i want to actually grab it if i may pardon me a lot of paper but i believe if you take a look at the definitions that were distributed and they do reference each column the fy16 projection and it's number five it indicates that the figure represents the total of the original budgeted amount for the current fiscal year which would be FY 16 and any prior year encumbrances only so it's only

▶ 43:13 those two items that does not do a 112th calculation or an estimate like that to the end of the year it's strictly what was originally budgeted plus the encumbrances that may be applicable to that category or that line and that's it nothing more that's why we did provide it this year and i hope to make it part of the documentation uh each year uh well thank you thank you alderman Zwirko next in queue we have president khan please yeah um mr del russo so we're we receive approximately over three hundred thousand dollars in reimbursements and we get two-thirds of our employee expense reimbursed as a result of the uh the regional agreement where would i in looking at the overall budget where does that

▶ 44:08 where is that income reflected is it in anticipated receipts or is it not part of the budget exactly correctly the chair it is in um local receipts goes right to the general fund um that's where it would show up so both of these both of these numbers are included in the local receipts category not the um state aid that's in a separate category as it needs to be so we can track it ourselves and uh tie it down to what we're supposed to get first of what we actually get it's the portion that comes from any regional agreements that we have like health department you'll find that in the local receipts that shows up there okay i just wanted to be sure for tracking purposes where this is figured in on the income side absolutely because uh we have

▶ 44:54 to be sure that we get it what we actually build that it actually comes in and how far behind are we with state reimbursement right now how how are they running it's a 12 month you get reimbursed for the year prior so we're currently on a 12-month lag and are they paying you quarterly or semi-annually i'd have to look at the distribution sheet and i can get that back to you next meeting okay but in in past years and decades they haven't always been on schedule that's exactly correct to make sure that the payments are actually being received when they're supposed to be being received if we're building the budget based on those numbers that's all I have right now Thank You president card alderman Medeiros please thank you most of my questions have been asked and

▶ 45:40 Monica C. Medeiros: answered and I just in the mileage discussion and this might be more for mr. Diller so have we thought of a would it be appropriate in a case like this I don't know if we do this for any other departments to allow them usage of the city city gas or anything like that for and I'm not sure if that would be a cost savings or or not I'd be happy to inquire that's a good question yeah absolutely let me find out from Public works. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Medeiros. Is there a motion, please? On discussion? Yes. Alderman Forbes, please. Thank you very much, and as a 20-year veteran of the United States Air Force, I'm always amazed at the amount of outreach and how this department in particular is able to bring people together in our community. We do walk amongst local

▶ 46:42 Scott M. Forbes: heroes every day, and it's something that I know that I've learned over my time and my experience not to take for granted I will give you a moment to for a shameless plug in in case you have any upcoming events as people watching it will give you an opportunity to let people know in the community what we have planned I did see $4,000 and line item for war memorial so I didn't know if there was something upcoming if you wanted to talk on behalf of that or if it's just restoration or repairs or refurbishments of existing items that we half here in the city a little bit of both so war memorials are sometimes used to cover the cost of the larger flags that we use say at Memorial Hall that are not necessarily always reimbursed at 100% we purchase flags around the city

▶ 47:27 we get reimbursed 100% for any flags we purchase for Memorial Day to flag veteran graves at the cemetery but any flags outside of that are at a car at auto own cost so that budget sometimes covers that that budget can also be used for restoration the cleaning of the veteran graves I don't know if anyone saw last year we took some time and really cleaned up all of the white marble stones at the veterans section and so things like that will come out of that budget we do have a ton of events coming up for Memorial Day that we hope to see as many people as possible at my schedules lots of paper um we will be putting up a women in service tribute on the lawn here at City Hall we also have a breakfast on the 29th over at Memorial Hall they are so gracious to let us use

▶ 48:13 Peter D. Mortimer: that space and then we will have our annual tour of the monument starting at 10 a.m. followed by the parade at 1 30 and closing ceremonies at the cemetery at 2 30 all of that on Sunday the 29th so we really hope to see as many people there as possible we're always looking for help flagging the graves at the cemetery which we'll be doing on the 28th great again thank you for all that do thank you so much and thank you for your service thank you and uh if Thorp no other discussion uh motion that moves the bottom line second alderman forbes has made a motion to move the bottom line for the veterans fund that motion was seconded by alderman boisselle seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none uh this budget is

▶ 48:59 Peter D. Mortimer: passed uh while while you're here uh in the hopes of letting you have an early evening we're going to take an order out of order it's order two zero one six dash one seven three it is the reauthorization of the melrose veterans event revolving fund number two six zero seven for fiscal year 2017. is there a motion please so moved second alderman Medeiros has moved to recommend this budget this revolving fund for passage said motion was seconded by alderman boy cell on discussion president khan please yeah over the course of the budget we'll be discussing many revolving funds people at home might not understand what they are these are funds within a department whether if they receive donations or other payments they can take the funds into

▶ 49:49 Peter D. Mortimer: a dedicated account and use it for a specific purpose and this account is not increasing the cap of funding that it currently has so i'm going to support this order as we go through this either myself or i'm sure some other alderman will point out if there are being any changes made to the spending limit authorizations uh relative to any other revolving funds that's all thank you very much president khan uh seeing no further discussion all in favor of the motion to recommend this revolving fund for passage please say aye aye any opposed hearing none uh this revolving fund order 2016-173 will be recommended to the full board ms redding thank you for your service and thank you for coming here to enlighten us this evening thank you so much and everyone

▶ 50:43 have a great evening thank you as well the next order the next budget we have before us is budget Budget number 930, it is department equipment in the amount of $152,800. Good evening, Mr. Cousins, good evening, Mr. Wilcox. How you doing? Good evening. Would you like to make some opening remarks? I'll just introduce myself. I'm Colby Cousins. I'm going to do my best to fill in for the IT department this evening and answer any questions related to that. on this sheet in front of you here I can speak to categories 52 and 53 these are copier leases printers and related supplies and we anticipate no increases to any of these line items this year thank you very much sir and Chris Wilcox chief assessor here to talk about line 55 the permit software system that

▶ 52:09 we currently have is outdated we're actually looking at combining that with GIS also bring in find the financial system in assessing data so this line item would represent a switch from the current geo TMS system that we have to a system that works with multiple other systems currently used in the city of Melrose it's a mobile friendly platform and it's cloud-based so it reduces a lot of the resources from IT and it's just a direction we're moving with all of our systems so that they talk to each other and they don't stand independent thank you thank you very much on discussion we have alderman boys out he is waving his turn president Khan police was next and then alderman Medeiros yeah so the

▶ 52:57 permitting software line is increasing significantly to $75,000 is this a one-time bump in this budget or do you expect this to be the new norm here it is it is a not a one-time this is the new norm it's actually two systems it's the GIS system that we just built it's moving from the assessing department into this budget item because they will be the same system and it's anything hardware software related to support those systems this every third year we're going to replace software the second year we're going to look at hardware and the third year is going to be a flyover for aerial photography so it's on a three-year schedule and it wouldn't you wouldn't see an increase every year it would be a constant 75,000 is part of this based on contractual

▶ 53:50 relationships with third-party vendors or is this just an estimate as to what we think we're going to be spending the the only contract that we actually have signed now is the GIS contract the other ones are depending on this budget the the line item and maybe they build an inspector can speak to this better the fifty five thousand dollars is just for the building software right now so it would see that cost go down significantly and we would actually get a software and hardware support for the seventy five thousand so we're almost bring in 20,000 over plus the 55 which would be 75 and we're getting a lot more function from it we can do flyovers we can make sure that all of our computers are up to date the software for all the stuff is extremely expensive so instead

▶ 54:35 Monica C. Medeiros: of coming to you for one-time cost it's all built into this this account right and so reducing this to a level that even a lawyer can understand we're consolidating some existing budgets into this new line is that a fair statement that is correct okay thank you president Kahn alderman Medeiros please thank you just to go back so the the 2016 revised budget amount was twenty eight thousand five hundred dollars it's now seventy five thousand dollars and you said there are funds that are coming that are Thorp a budget line that's coming out of the Assessor's Department the 75,000 represents a GIS line item that I had in my budget last year for roughly $20,000 the 55,000 is just for the outdated

▶ 55:25 Monica C. Medeiros: system that we have in the building department that's based on the fees collected for building permits when we have better years we pay more in fees we're trying to get away from that we want to pay a steady cost for software and in my opinion this is outrageous for a price structure so we're trying to get from that and is there any other line is it was there anything from permitting software that was in the building department that's being moved over here are those the only two budget line items that are involved just things too okay and this is you know a year you go down to the the MMA conference mentioned earlier right and Thorp all kinds of vendors online permitting software do we will this allow that look how from the building perspective perhaps mr.

▶ 56:22 Johnson can kind of please do yes presently over the last year I've been working with mr. Wilcox in trying to find a proper system and and we found one i we believe we found one where we'll allow online permitting our goal at beginning would be to have electrical and plumbing do their online get that up and running for the online portion on the building portion you will be able to insert everything up to a certain point then you'll have to print the application i'll bring it down but eventually we want to move towards It's an online, real-time-based platform for inspections and the software. And certainly what I hear from the community members from the business and building and other community members,

▶ 57:26 Monica C. Medeiros: that that's what they'd like to see and that that would improve their aspect of the service delivery. I know we had almost what we had approved at one point a position in your office for an additional person that we then didn't fill will this help you streamline so that maybe you don't need as much administrative help or do you think that that's a goal I can't promise you that but that's a goal and so thank you I appreciate that and just to mr. cousins how these these line items that you discussed are not anticipated to move how much time do we have in these contracts before they we have to renegotiate these are annual contracts but do you think what we've got here is sufficient to yes yep thank you thank

▶ 58:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: you very much Thank You alderman Medeiros next in queue we have alderman levelman alderman lemon has yielded the floor and next is alderman right please Thank You mr. chairman which one of you wants to field this but generally speaking with regards to whether it's the goods and services or these software contracts do you go out to bid for these that you hire off this do you purchase off the state list how do these ultimately come to be commitments on behalf of the city of Melrose we follow the guidelines of the bidding laws I believe under 25,000 it's it's three bids we get okay all the contracts are reviewed by the solicitor's office and the 30 B okay and do you check the state list I mean is we can buy off the state lists and usually because the state buys

▶ 59:25 Michael P. Zwirko: isn't such bulk we can get a better deal but I don't know of any of these particular items or any things that you could find on the stateless but great okay thank you Thank You alderman right alderman Suarco please Thank You mr. chairman thank you I just have I think two questions here so I'm looking in section 53 under supplies and materials and it appears that for the first line that weren't the projection is quite high it was budgeted actually for about 28,000 but the projection is about 60,000 so it's almost double just curious if there were some expenditures in this fiscal year that were respective of that or if could you well what happens with the permit based software we have now it's linked to the amount of fees that we collect a

▶ 1:00:15 Michael P. Zwirko: percentage of the amount of fees so that it's a it's a moving target you can't hit it um you know when we have very good months our fee to them goes up that's why uh that's how the contract is structured is that that's how it was that's how it was structured yeah so uh we're punished for our success in this case did i structure it no and that's why we're hope you know we'll be moving on um the last thing this is more of a comment than a question uh gis is invaluable i'm a huge fan of the program i used it in college for cities and towns to be using programs and keeping up to speed with the technology that can be utilized with gis and the hardware and software that comes with it is well worth the money spent in my

▶ 1:01:05 Robert A. Boisselle: opinion so appreciate the um the forward-looking component of gis and utilizing it more for our city so thank you that's all i had mr chairman thank you thank you alderman Zwirko alderman voice out please well we're talking about a new permitting system we've been talking about this for the past five years close to it what I hear is the assessor's office and the inspectorial services involved here are there any other departments that can be merged into this particular type of program yes we plan on having the planning department engineering we're gonna start with just the building department but health department at some point could could join on the system it's expandable to as many departments throughout citywide now with each expansion does

▶ 1:01:53 Robert A. Boisselle: that have an extra charge for software and maintenance and so forth as far as software the uh the charge for the setup is is um Thorp a cost associated the one-time cost but after that usually Thorp no cost associated with it now with the future of more departments coming on are we planning to have the appropriate hardware in place to absorb the other departments uh at this point it's completely cloud-based and part of our contract we don't use any resources except the internet and city hall okay very good well good luck gentlemen thank you very much thank you mr thank you alderman boycelle is there a motion please motion to move the bottom line alderman boycella is made to move a motion to move the bottom line for department equipment

▶ 1:02:44 it was seconded by alderman Medeiros seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget will be recommended to the full board for passage the next budget we have before us is capital outlay in the amount of four hundred and fifty thousand four hundred and nineteen dollars and twenty six cents good evening good evening again um the this is the second year of the commitment to both this uh the city has made um of three hundred thousand dollars a year of a five-year commitment the lease um you'll see it is broken down again proportional 150 and 150. uh colby's here if Thorp any specific questions to that um i'll run through the other two items quickly the first again is the would be the police vehicle lease i believe

▶ 1:03:56 it's year four or five of um 56 125 and we are also seeing under pb project that's pine banks projects that's the capital project of 101 294 18. which was submitted as part of the operating budget also and this is where it will appear going forward that uh having said that if Thorp any questions perhaps colby and i can can help address them thank you mr delarusso are there any questions or a motion on this order on this budget please president khan yeah i don't really have a question i just have a comment um in terms of this budget it appears to me in looking at this and other items is that we're we're proceeding as business as usual in terms of funding what we intended to fund and whatnot is that not correct that's

▶ 1:05:03 Peter D. Mortimer: exactly correct this is not some kind of austerity budget where we've cut anything radically as far as i can see we haven't cut these these programs no that's exactly correct okay that's all thank you president khan i'm seeing no further alderman wishing to be heard is there a motion to move bottom line second alderman boisselle has made a motion to move the bottom line on the capital outlay budget duly seconded by alderman forbes all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none the budget for capital outlay will be recommended to the full board for passage the next budget we have before us is budget 141 it is the budget for the assessor's office in the amount of 329 402.72 good evening again mr wilcox thank you thank you sir please proceed

▶ 1:05:56 um fiscal 2017 budget the melrose assessing department is responsible for local taxation in the city of melrose the assessing staff consists of one full-time assessor one full-time head clerk one part-time clerk and three members of the board of assessors over the last year the department has increased the online transactions restructured the assessing website helped build the city's first gis website completed a full inspection of the city all city properties and implemented an inspection project using 3d data measuring technology which is the first in the state of massachusetts nice on day-to-day transactions the assessing office will update over 700 property owners per year review about 400 property sales review 1500 building permits

▶ 1:06:51 and grant 280 personal exemptions we process over 450 excise abatements and in the assessor's office we also process passports we roughly do 600 of those a year for this upcoming year this is a reval year so the Department of Revenue will be in our office this is our third year so we plan to work with the Department of Revenue to get our values set timely other projects this year include updating the computer system for the assessing office which is 11 years old and the server is 11 years old so we're on borrowed time as far as that goes I put it in this budget because we're maxed out with memory and the software is not supported for the next version this year we're also looking to establish an annual property assessment program where we can verify data

▶ 1:07:44 throughout the city every year instead of every nine years we would continue to improve the assessing department functions with the use of technology and provide an excellent customer support for all the residents of Melrose thank you thank you very much Alderman Medeiros please thank you you said 3d data yes so one of the newest technologies for measuring buildings is 3d technology it's based out of the robotics field the city of Melrose and first contract in the state and probably the second in new england at least maybe the country this is the most accurate way to measure buildings and we got the price down to almost the same ballpark as we're paying for someone to go with a tape measure and

▶ 1:08:34 Monica C. Medeiros: climbing bushes and stuff the accuracy is uh down to four inches and all of our commercial industrial and apartment buildings are all measured using this technology that's uh certainly futuristic and I have to compliment you on all the use of technology here that you know it certainly didn't seem like we were going in that direction not so long ago so that's kind of interesting and exciting like to see that I went in progress where is that in this budget as far as the measure and list project that was actually last year's budget we're wrapping it up this June so it's just a one-time currently we the city of Melrose every nine years did the whole city from one end to the other this this 2017 budget takes a step away from that approach and we go out every year to to

▶ 1:09:26 measure so we do a thousand properties a year instead of nine thousand properties all in one year so the 3d data was part of the read the reval that's what we saw it the measure and list was a requirement from the state if we this is what was our last year to complete that that's correct so and then where is the I imagine that's in the reval line the 529 300 Thorp two lines action Thorp two lines for for revaluation the inspections are actually in professional services that line item increased 8,000 percent but that's an item that we paid for on the ninth year so that was a you know two to three hundred thousand dollar contract every nine years what I did is I broke it up to every year the other revaluation is part of the reval budget five to nine

▶ 1:10:21 three hundred and then the amount that we were just discussing in in one of the technology budgets there in department equipment where where is that coming out of the revalve 529 300 is reduced by $20,000 for the basically the GIS services for the city of Melrose not just the assessing department okay great thank you very much appreciate that Thank You mr. thank you alderman Medeiros president Kahn please yeah so just to make sure I understand this clearly so instead of having large chunks that we have to pay for revalue annualize this out so now every year we'll have a line that's approximately forty thousand dollars instead of having large appropriations in reval years that's that's correct i like a constant budget

▶ 1:11:27 and i think that the data that you get from year to year is a lot better than waiting every nine years okay and that's the reason that this this line 52 9 000 went up 8 000 because it essentially came up from 500 in the last year because we didn't have a large rebail uh obligation that year uh to this forty thousand five hundred is that correct that's correct and are we are we in a new contract this year is this the start of the of a nine year cycle yes this would be the first year of a nine-year cycle and turning to your salaries and wages um just uh in order to maintain a foolish consistency um are all of your salary lines fully contained in that budget that is correct all of them are contained in our budget nobody's in water sewer no surveillance anything

▶ 1:12:25 Peter D. Mortimer: else everybody who's assessing is in assessing and uh so you have your position you have head clerk senior account clerk and you have the stipends for the board of assessors that's correct thank you mr president alderman Zwirko please my questions were asked i withdraw yield thank you very much is there a motion please motion to move the bottom line we have a motion to move the bottom line on this budget by alderman Boisselle second duly seconded by alderman Zwirko seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget will be recommended to the full board thank you for coming tonight mr wilcox very well done sir the next budget we have before us is the police in the the police department of

▶ 1:13:15 the city of melrose in the amount of four million one hundred and sixty two thousand eight hundred and eighty one dollars and twenty five cents chief lyle would you join us again please sir would you like to make an opening statement if i may yes please do just a year in review for the police Police Department, this current fiscal year, we had three officers graduate from the academy last summer, the Redding Police Academy, they were in patrol. Unfortunately, they're all on midnights, and I worked midnights before, so I know what that's all about. We are hiring one officer through the COPS grant, we were fortunate last year to get the grant. He is going to be entering the academy on May 23rd, the Lowell Police Academy.

▶ 1:14:07 he graduates late in the fall he will supplement the officer that is going to be the SRO in the middle school will be a first of the city to have one in the middle school and I think that's a win-win for this community as far as that our staffing current levels are 30 patrolmen 9 sergeants 4 lieutenants and myself and 2 civilian part-timers calls for service for this past year six 6,647, that's July 1 through April 30th of this year. 911 calls and business calls combined. We've had 79 arrests, 128 summonses, and 10 protective custodies. Citation data, we've had 2,350 car stops. Of those, 1,350 were warnings, written citations, excuse me, at a value of $17,520. Our parking through March of 30th of this year were written 3,748 parking tickets

▶ 1:15:13 for a dollar value of 103,372 even. Extra duty details, the admin fee from July 1 through December 31st, I don't have the data for the rest of this fiscal year to date, was 43,500. Grants for the police department totaling $275,166 for this year. And then lastly, Naxalone, a program for saving individuals that are overdosing on opioids. The police department has saved 11 individuals. And combined with public safety, with the fire department, we had four incidents where the officers handed the Naxalone to the higher level of care, and they saved the individual. We've had one death this year through our response to the police department. And unfortunately, through the clerk's office, Thorp been 16 individuals that succumbed from opioid overdoses.

▶ 1:16:18 And Thorp eight pending in the medical examiner's office now. Thank you, Chief Lyle. You're welcome. President Kahn. So, Chief, are your overall staffing levels going to be any different next year than they are? We'll be up one. We'll be up one. We'll have 31 patrolmen. Okay, so the 30 that you indicated is going to be 31. And how many individuals, if anyone, in your budget are in active military service now? We have two officers that have been activated, a sergeant and a patrolman. Okay, and is there anybody who's in your budget who's on long-term medical leave who's not- Yes, we've had an officer since the early part of December. Okay, and is that officer on salary or is he on chapter 41, section 1?

▶ 1:17:11 He's on light duty on a medical, not 111F. He's not on 111F? He is not on 111F. And is there any anticipation of any significant changes in your staffing level this year? anticipate any retirements hires or promotions no separations till june of next year we have one that will be a mandate retire i was notified through our operations supervisor that the one individual that's been deployed since september is going to be deployed again next october for another year okay can you explain for the public what happens when somebody's deployed because we assume that everybody understands what we're talking about but what's the impact on your like it well so we'll say for instance if we have a shift of four offices on the road this is an

▶ 1:17:59 example and when somebody gets deployed by the military we go down to three officers on that shift so the next vacancy automatically through minimum manning causes overtime so is it you know the sick call the vacation or is it the officer in the military that causes our overtime so we generally go with whatever the last call out was we clarified as sick medical whatever it may be it could be an investigation it could be a number of things so when somebody goes into the military obviously you're saving their position and you have to man that position during this budget year and you have to fill it with a person receiving overtime yes we've even explored looking at you know hiring part-time officers but that never panned out for us and their salary doesn't cover

▶ 1:18:41 fully um when for an overtime for a backfill it covers about 50 percent now in this this upcoming budget your overtime allotment has been increased yes correct yes a hundred thousand dollars okay so you're up to was it 282 odd 282 yes and um you've spent i think approximately 315 as of the end of april how much do you think that overtime is going to run for the balance of this budget here on an estimate we're between 60 and 70 000 for the next seven weeks are you going to hit 400 000 in total over time do you think um you know i can't answer that i i would say that i would hope not but we may are you gonna you're gonna surpass 350. clearly okay and and just tracking back in the 215 budget you were beyond the 460. yeah 466. yeah 466 is what i have

▶ 1:19:42 here so it appears that you know and i'm glad what i like to see in the budget is a number that actually accurately reflects what we think we're going to spend and i'd like to see the overtime budget reflect that because in 17 years of sitting here i don't think i've ever seen a a police or fire budget get to the end of the year without exceeding uh exceeding what's been budgeted for over time um but it looks to me that you know we're going to continue to overspend our public safety overtime allotments i don't know what the answer to it is other than maybe significant increases in staffing if i may under the management study the city had two options we could hire more personnel with benefits or we could manage through overtime and most communities

▶ 1:20:41 manage it with overtime because Thorp less less cost on the back end with benefits yeah it's a it's a it's a management decision yes it is right i was going to spare the public listening to a repeat of my my speech from last year so i was i was trying to give you the upgrade that wasn't from memory that's from yeah i was trying to bridge it for the uh for the viewing public that's all i have right now thank you president khan next we have alderman lemon please thank you mr chairman thank you chief for coming out tonight uh just a couple of questions when you were here for this process last year you mentioned the 9-1-1 grant and you thought that that might be going away um no it is not um we're still waiting to hear it was a there was a long delay and i think

▶ 1:21:21 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: it had something to do with the new administration coming in from the governor's office we have applied we have accepted it our offices have gone through the training um and we're waiting on reimbursements great waiting patiently i'm sure um and um you mentioned the the narcan which is a really important program here in the city and in other cities just a little more detail on that if you have the information do you have uh the number of times or doses that were deployed here in the city and you know that's a tough question to answer as doses because of the potency of the opioids that the officers are coming across or heroin is probably the best way to say it is so potent that one dose doesn't work sometimes it's two and three doses they went last

▶ 1:22:08 night they saved the boys life last night and i don't know the number of doses but last weekend they used three doses on an individual so it's a very tough thing to say i know that we have have advocates for supply right now we're very fortunate that the Attorney General's office has stepped in and we're buying a knock-in for $20 a dose and a year ago I was paying 50 so with the balance we have is about $800 where we're probably pretty good until the fall I spoke to the auditor's office about supplemental funding for it in the fall they were going to work with the police department and supply us with additional funds okay thank you and so there are two you carry currently carry two doses in every vehicle is that right

▶ 1:22:52 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: there is two in every vehicle and that includes the vehicles at the school the SRO has it in his cruiser years will be included and then the new school resource officers absolutely yes right good well you know it's obviously a very important program eleven people were saved one last night actually 15 with the the handoff to a higher level of care which is EMS is the fire department paramedics or Cataldo I think you know for all the things that we funding that are so important you can't really say that Thorp anything much more important it's a it's a proven tool for law enforcement as well as you know EMS and I think the fall is going to come up pretty quickly so you know thank you for all you do to try to make sure that you're able to get these and it would be

▶ 1:23:38 Francis X. Wright Jr.: great to see this funded you know every year going forward I know it's not in this budget I look at it this way we're given an opportunity for someone to to your life in order absolutely or help or assistance yes thank you thank you for that work um i think that's all i have thank you thank you mr chairman thank you alderman Lemmerman alderman wright please thank you mr chairman uh chief just to revisit the overtime issue again um and i know it's always a you know the way overtime versus uh bringing somebody else on with benefits and sometimes the cost analysis doesn't make sense but my understanding is you can make a military appointment either off a straight appointment off a list so you could bring somebody off a layoff list and bring them in for the purpose of

▶ 1:24:31 Francis X. Wright Jr.: filling that slot yes that would be somebody who is already Academy trained worked as a police officer been laid off in another community could come in here fill that slot while an officer is off an active duty and then when that officer comes back that military appointment officer would again go to the state layoff list and we've looked at that we've explored it and you you have to understand that we cover 50% of that military deployment salary yeah so if you bring in another officer off the layoff list for an example this the cost succeeds what we're we're paying in overtime if we do pay 50% of the the officer working and then we also have to pay time and a half for the officer who is working overtime all right yes so this bit Thorp benefits and other

▶ 1:25:22 Francis X. Wright Jr.: things that we have to cover yeah no I get it and that's where it you know I guess about a third I don't have the analysis and I guess I would I'm gonna presume you guys have done that we certainly explore that I ask you to continue to do that and I'm sure the the auditor has is continually we certainly review that man exactly it didn't work for us then I don't believe it'll work for us now the other question I had is with regards to having a reserve list because as you all know if when somebody retires and you can't predict other than mandatory retirement you can oh somebody the retires or leaves the city you then have to call for a list you have to wait for HRD has to give you one then you

▶ 1:26:07 Francis X. Wright Jr.: have to cut all the candidates get a postcard they have to come in sign the list then you have to set up interviews and if the physicals and that PAT tests and all that and then finally you make selections the man that makes an appointment it comes before us and at that point you have to get them into an Academy all the while because somebody had retired probably months earlier somebody's working overtime to fill that slot yes and then the person's at the Academy so all that time someone's working but it takes about a year yeah so I've seen success with a reserve list so that you could appoint people to a reserve list they go through that whole process ahead of time and then when somebody retires they're ready to go they're either ready to go the Academy

▶ 1:27:00 Francis X. Wright Jr.: immediately or sometimes they're even Academy trained and they're ready to go on the journey yes so have we looked at that it's something I explored with the city solicitor and certainly I'll follow up with them again I will say that next year we have one officer that is mandated by age he has to retire in a year from in June okay and you can predict those are the predictable those are those were given and those are very very unique for us to have because a lot of times people just yeah we'll leave and go to another municipality or whatever yeah I mean I guess I would appreciate if I knew that there was you know a careful review of that and the benefits it might have for the city and keep the overtime costs down but I know you guys are working hard on this stuff

▶ 1:27:45 Monica C. Medeiros: so I appreciate it that's it thank you Thank You alderman right alderman Medeiros please thank you thank you very much chief I'd like to revisit the Narcan yeah there is no Narcan in this budget no there is not and there was not in last year's budget when we sat here no we're pretty fortunate last year that Leahy clinic donated substantial monies for us to purchase doc here yes I think back in January they donated about eighteen hundred dollars which to fund Narcan and those funds were deposited into fund two eight eight four is that is that reflected here at all on the budget or is that something that's off budget no it's in a donation account so that's it and I have it in front of me is not can donation account and it is fun 2884 under 211 police and so we got

▶ 1:28:47 that in January you said we have about $900 you're about 50% left so it's you know it's taking us well the big thing is the price of max alone it's a correct name is went from $50 to $20 so it's a huge savings for us and we're buying is that we needed so that when we have a stock in the PD and when we run low, Sergeant Mackey actually is in charge of it, he orders it directly through the state and we have it in a day. And I know one of the issues is that there is kind of an expiration on the supply. How long are we keeping it before we use it? Well sadly, we're using it quite frequently so it has like a six month shelf life and we use it a lot quicker than six months well I mean I think we see that you know

▶ 1:29:42 Monica C. Medeiros: the cost for this somewhere you know somewhere near that $2,000 at mark you know seventeen eighteen hundred dollar mark I'd like to see this I'd like to see us find a way to fund this in the budget that being said I know we do have other things to talk about and I I did want to go back to overtime can you kind of describe for the public what's involved with overtime is that you know how that relates to details is there anything that we are able to be in reimburse for as a city in terms of overtime cost not particularly unless we did try to explore it with the fire department on on car accidents but the first insurance company dealt with we failed miserably with so we abandoned it actually the account has been dissolved that was the only way we could get

▶ 1:30:40 reimbursed for overtime unless it was unless it was a fire scene or something that we could go after the insurance company with a both a joint police fire investigation so is any of what we see hear from grants in terms of your salary or your overtime they're out the rock you know and I have the list in front of me yeah the alcohol compliance grant is reimbursable the traffic grants reimbursable our 911 both those grants are reimbursable we have an officer attached to DEA task force his overtime is is all reimbursable so is that but general overtime for the police department whether it's a sick call or vacation is not reimbursable so when we look at what's actually been expended is some of that been reimbursed through

▶ 1:31:30 Monica C. Medeiros: these well if you look at last year's numbers the four hundred sixty six thousand the prior budget coordinator was including some of some of those additional grant monies into our overtime so it was being filtered through our budget and it was an exact number but if you look at this year's we're at 314 in overtime approximately that's an accurate number with the exception of our DEA overtime he accrues about $17,000 in overtime a year and that all gets reimbursed by the feds so the number that we see of the four hundred and sixty six thousand five sixteen that is not only on budget items that doesn't Thorp reimbursable overtime in there yes there is okay and you know I know I've talked about this plenty of times about the special police

▶ 1:32:20 Monica C. Medeiros: and you know maybe utilizing special police to help with the overtime here has do you have any special police right now Thorp no special police in the Morales Police Department are you doing anything to try to to bring in or recruit any special police officers under our ordinance no I'm not there would be a cost factor to that too so a special police officer would would assume the same salary as a regular police officer he just or he or she would not have the same level of training as a regular police officer I believe when we changed the ordinance a while back that it did require a significant amount of training to be paid by the individual a regular police officer goes through a full full Academy reserve or a special police officer goes

▶ 1:33:17 Peter D. Mortimer: to a reserve intermittent academy which is substantially less hours and that that's basically weekends they have a weekend trainings up at like camp curtis right but that was your suggestion that we go to that well i think there was a bigger role and we're certainly going to explore different dispatch options and so on so forth and right now we're still in negotiations with that all right well i have to say i'd like to see us look at that thank you thank you alderman Alderman Medeiros, I'm seeing no further aldermen wishing to be heard. Motion to move the bottom line of account 211. Second. Alderman Boycelle has made a motion to recommend for passage budget 211, the police department budget.

▶ 1:34:02 Peter D. Mortimer: Said motion was duly seconded by Alderman Lemmerman. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, the police department budget will be recommended to the full board for passage. Presently, we will take up order 2016-171. It is the re-op, President Kahn, please. I want to speak on that order, I'll wait until you finish reading the order. Excuse me, sir. All set? All I want to do is point out that this is reauthorization of the fire alarm revolving account at the same amount as last year. I'd move for passage of the order. Second. All right, if I could just read the order. That's the reauthorization of Police Department False Alarm Revolving Fund number 2665 for fiscal year 2017.

▶ 1:34:53 Peter D. Mortimer: Said Thorp a motion to recommend for passage by President Kahn of this budget duly seconded by Alderman Boycelle. Seeing no discussion, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this revolving account will be recommended to the full board for passage. thank you very much for coming this evening have a great night thank you the next department budget number 241 we have before us is inspection services mr johnson in the amount of 248 791.77 mr johnson please good evening good evening my name is paul johnson i'm the director of inspectional services i'm in my ninth year here and the totals for this year we've issued combined permits building plumbing gas electrical permits of a little over 3 100 permits

▶ 1:35:57 for the past year and out of the 3 100 permits approximately 5 500 inspections were done through the air thank you very much sir is the president khan please on discussion mr johnson your budget indicates uh that we have your position the uh assistant director position a wire inspector and a plumbing inspector are all of those positions uh full-time benefits positions sir they are not okay which ones they are not uh our plumbing inspector is part-time non-benefit Our electrical inspector is part-time benefit. And then, and that's that, we're benefit, myself and Kathy. And are all compensation and salary paid by your department reflected in your budget? Yes. They appear nowhere else in any other city budget, only here.

▶ 1:37:03 And your professional services account, Assume is to cover Inspections made during periods of vacation illness or things of that nature. Is that correct? Yes, and additional inspectors as We've been using that account for the last few years. I have a Part-time vendor that comes in two days a week as needed on an as needed basis to do inspections My recollection is that he does inspections on multi multi unit. Well, that's oh he also does that yes yes okay and just to try to speed things along you have a revolving account associated with this budget which you are not seeking to increase the cap in spending for we are not thank you president khan seeing no further all from the move move the bottom line

▶ 1:38:02 Peter D. Mortimer: second we have a motion by alderman boisselle to move the bottom line for the inspectional services department said motion duly seconded by alderman forbes um i think i see alderman's worker requesting oh i'm sorry uh so seeing no further discussion the motion has been made and seconded all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none the budget for inspectional services will be recommended to the full board at this point we will take up order 2016-170 it is the reauthorization of the inspectional services revolving account number 2658 for fiscal year 2017. is there a motion please alderman Medeiros has made a motion to recommend the budget for passage to recommend and uh on discussion when the time as soon as we get a

▶ 1:38:53 Monica C. Medeiros: second you're first thank you alderman Medeiros has made a motion to recommend this revolving account for passage to the full board said motion was duly seconded by alderman boycelle alderman Medeiros on discussion please thank you uh this uh revolving account has a fifteen thousand dollar limit and that is the same as previous yes and um can you talk about what goes into this account i know we've you know you go throughout the seats streets of melrose the last uh year or two is particular i feel like almost every other house has got a building permit up is is that that's how i feel yeah actually this revolving account is specifically for multi-family inspections it's a state-mandated mandated program through the building code where depending on the amount

▶ 1:39:42 of units in your building uh from a three unit to you know a hundred and some units would it it's uh could be annually bi-annually it could be every five years so it's a state mandated program and we have that gentleman I spoke about earlier that comes in a couple of days a week and we have them do these inspections as well and what kinds of things do they look for this is primarily a safety inspection we go in there we make sure all the emergency lights exit signs are working smoke detectors are on hooked up we don't test the smoke detectors they're responsible for that yearly as a property owner um fire extinguishers have the right tags on them they've been tested and recharged we check the boiler rooms make sure Thorp no clutter nothing

▶ 1:40:38 Scott M. Forbes: that would impose a heavy fire load or cause a fire that so it's limited to common spaces we don't go into people's apartments and again it's a state mandated are you doing any checking of meters or anything related to metering or plumbing or anything like that what type of metering maybe water and sewer or no anything like that okay thank you thank you alderman Medeiros alderman forbes thank you mr chairman thank you for being here tonight i know uh i've had some discussions with you about uh certain people in the city that are non-compliant when we issue fines do you have any information or numbers as far as how many fines were actually issued for the year and and how much that is i don't have a total i do have um i am aware of one

▶ 1:41:35 fine that we actually did collect uh you're all aware of the mount hood case where the neglect of the property led to state the city receivership that property now has been renovated and been sold, and we were able to collect approximately $30,000 in fines, just my fines from my department, through the receivership program. Myself and the city solicitor will be working on coming before you in this upcoming year to institute a 40U program tickets that these tickets in that program, when we issue them, if they don't pay him they get put right on their municipal lien certificate so when they go to sell the property we'll get the money automatically as part of that thank you thank you very much thank you mr. chairman Thank You alderman

▶ 1:42:32 Peter D. Mortimer: Forbes motion has been made by alderman Medeiros to recommend this budget for passage said motion was duly seconded by alderman Boycelle seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget It will be recommended to the full board for passage. Now we will take up the revolving account that is commensurate with this budget. Your revolving account, sir, if you would, for one more moment. Sorry, I thought we just did. That was the whole revolving account, and the budget's gone. Very good, very good. All right. If I may, Mr. Chairman, Alderman Wright, we did check, Chris Wilcock checked, and People's GIS is on the state bidding list, so person that we're looking at very closely for the permanent software.

▶ 1:43:17 Peter D. Mortimer: This is an update already. Through you, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Johnson, thank you for coming tonight. Great job, as always. Thank you. The next budget we have before us is budget 155. It is the information technology budget in the amount of $532,194.91. Good evening again, Mr. Cousins. Good evening again. So the budget we have here is basically, I think, mostly what you're used to seeing or what you saw last year. Thorp a couple points of note. The telephone line item under category 52, Thorp an increase of about 13,800. That's to support an internet bandwidth upgrade from 100 megabits to 200 megabits. That supports an increase in school devices.

▶ 1:44:21 We added about 1,000 Chromebooks to the network this year, and also to comply with online testing requirements for the schools. Thorp also a new line item, 525309 OSDBA that's a support contract for our munis financial system it includes a necessary application upgrade to that software along with a year of support we felt that was prudent to enter into that contract while we're in transition with our uh we have a vacancy at the cio position so we're a little bit short-staffed here so the support will be helpful and the timing is also right to do the actual application upgrade for that system thank you very much sir president khan please so um is is the telephone line help All city and all school telephone service?

▶ 1:45:35 Yeah, the telephone service, the point of presence is at City Hall and our data center. So from that point, we distribute it throughout our fiber optic network to all city and school buildings. Okay, and you have in your department, you have yourself, The chief vacancy position, IT systems analyst, financial systems analyst, and a stipend. Does anybody who's a member of this department, and I know some people do it, at least one person does. Who gets paid from other budgets? And if you don't know this, maybe Mr. Del Russo could answer that question for me. I think I have some information on that. The chief information officer is 60% paid by the city budget. and 40 percent paid by the school budget so what you see here is represents 60 percent of that

▶ 1:46:30 salary um and then Thorp one other the financial financial systems analyst um i believe is split into a couple different places uh 14 hours comes out of the it department budget and i think right now she is working on a water sewer working out of a water sewer bond she's working on the water meter replacement project so i think she's being paid partially out of that as well so do you know what percentage of her salary is in this budget and what percentage in the water or sewer enterprise? I am not sure about that. Okay, can you get that info for me please, Mr. Delarusso? Sure, yep, yep. And also- For the record, let Mr. Delarusso reflect that Mr. Delarusso was indicating that he will obtain that information for you, Mr. President.

▶ 1:47:31 He was nodding in a way that led me to believe that he was agreeable to the request, yes. Correct. And also, one of my new points of inquiry that came up last time. If when Mr. Del Russo responds to that, he could indicate how the determination to make the allocation between budgets was made. I would be quite interested to know that. I think that's all I have right now. Thank you, President Kahn. Alderman Wright, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You indicated that the telephone, when you talk about the increase in the telephone line, it was for increased bandwidth. Yes. Is this by contract? Or is this just like billing? Yeah, this is by contract. We currently have a contract for 100 megabit internet service.

▶ 1:48:38 Francis X. Wright Jr.: And who is that with? that's with a company called addition networks okay is that the tel that's what the telephone contract is with them uh it it falls under the telephone line item okay so uh that includes our telephone service as well but the increase is related to um the internet bandwidth increase okay so all that money is going through that contract I guess I'm trying to figure out is is the increase in bandwidth reflected in the increase or is the whole amount before us all for bandwidth and increased bandwidth getting way out of my league here so the whole entire amount sorry the entire amount in that line item that includes our telephone service as well for the city okay so those would be like desk phones does that include like yeah cell

▶ 1:49:39 Francis X. Wright Jr.: phones and all that too yes yes and who is that is that with Sprint the Verizon or we use Verizon for Verizon Wireless for our our cell phones and Verizon for our for our regular okay and this okay so some of this is for that and some of this is for bandwidth yeah if you were to look at this this would have been level funded if it were not for the increase in internet bandwidth okay this year all right and is this strictly Melrose I know we have the consortium of municipalities we provide IT services for but this is strictly Melrose right yeah this is this is designed to support uh the uh increase in devices that we've added to our network just from melrose primarily the schools great okay great thank you thank you mr chairman

▶ 1:50:35 Michael P. Zwirko: thank you alderman wright alderman suerco please thank you mr chairman so i made similar questions to the veterans organization here in the city i know that But we also farm out our services, our IT services, to other municipalities. And I'm just curious, does that mean that the IT department is not only a cost center, but also getting receipts from these services? Yeah, we do generate some revenue. So we have contracts with two other communities, the town of Essex and the town of Saugus. so uh the town of essex is a is a relatively relatively small agreement although they have requested an increase in services this year so we'll be looking at adding to that right now they pay us uh 500 a quarter so that amounts to two thousand dollars

▶ 1:51:40 a year uh the sagas contract is a larger contract uh it began at uh seven thousand four hundred and forty three dollars and twenty cents a quarter but they have since uh requested additional capacity so we now build them uh ten thousand nine hundred and eighty one dollars and twenty cents uh per quarter can you explain the services within those contracts uh you know going from five hundred dollars a quarter with the town of essex versus what we're providing for the town of saugus uh sure the uh the town of essex we do some we host some of their files uh just basic file hosting and then we have a couple virtual desktops that we provide to them so they have employees that work in their town hall with thin client devices and they actually boot onto a desktop that's

▶ 1:52:36 hosted here in our data center uh the town of saugus uh has a little bit larger deployment and they have a good amount of file hosting and then we also host their entire munis financial system uh in our data center here so do these contracts require travel and it seems to me that the the contractor we're working with essex is mainly here they're kind of piloting in from afar Essex isn't exactly around the corner like Saugus is I'm just curious is there any on-site management that needs to be done with these contracts minimal on-site management usually just for the initial rollout of the service the connection to us once that's established we manage any of this stuff that we have to manage from here because it's physically located here and I have

▶ 1:53:33 Michael P. Zwirko: remote access into their network so if they need help with anything I'm able to remote in from here and those receipts those go into the general fund correct yes the the other question I have is in terms of the systems that we've built here and the programs and software that we have do is it allow the opportunity for City Hall employees and other employees to work from home in cases where Thorp been a snow day of inclement weather I know that you know we all don't have the ability to get email on our phone we don't certainly don't have desktops but I'm just curious if that is something that's a service that we provide we also provide remote access services so Thorp a number of employees that take advantage of it they can log in and get to a number of

▶ 1:54:32 applications and including munis so if they need to access their financials there they're able to do that from a remote location I believe the assessor is able to do that with his assess Pro application and Thorp a Thorp a few other Thorp a list of other applications as as departments request remote access oftentimes they'll request whatever their specific application is that that they use to be installed on the remote access server and I'll do that for them okay thank you for that I have I have no more questions I appreciate your time Thank You Thank You alderman Suarco alderman moment please thank you mr chairman thank you very much for coming down um my question is regarding the uh seminars line item uh which is five four zero seven hundred uh last fiscal year this line

▶ 1:55:34 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: item received an increase of 375 percent going from 2000 to 9 500 so an increase of 7 500 and the way that was described to us at the time was that there were going to be three retirements in the auditor's office uh in the coming year and that this was for training those new employees but i'm seeing now that it would be a one-time a one-time increase but i'm seeing now that it is level funded at the same increased amount for for this request can you speak to that um i am not familiar with that uh right now so that's something i'd have to investigate and get back to you if you could get back to us with that information i'd appreciate it thank you so Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:56:16 Robert A. Boisselle: Thank you, Alderman Lemmerman. Alderman Boycelle, please. You mentioned the broadband infrastructure. Does that take care of the external internet and the internal network, the wide area network within the schools and so forth? The increase to that line item is that what you're speaking about? No, that is strictly the access to the internet. So you're going from 100 megabytes to 200? 200 megabytes, yeah. And does that seem a little low in comparison? I mean, the standard is almost, I mean, the discussion I hear is from megabytes to gigabytes now for 1,000 students. Why are we just going by blocks of 100 and not just moving directly to 500 megabytes or 1 gigabyte of? information? Well, we have some metrics

▶ 1:57:16 Robert A. Boisselle: that we have a monitoring tool that we monitor our bandwidth usage and we also have some devices that provide quality of service and they're able to manage how much bandwidth is allocated to certain services like streaming video and we're able to shut off certain types of traffic that are undesirable, like bit torrent traffic or something, which tends to crop up in the schools. So based on our metrics, we're maxing out at 100 megabits on a fairly frequent interval, but not all of the time. So I think doubling the bandwidth should be able to accommodate it, but we may have to reevaluate that now with the new Resource Center that's going to be operational hopefully by the summer of this year into the fall they

▶ 1:58:21 Robert A. Boisselle: were talking about putting in another hundred to two hundred computers in that area alone is that 200 going to cover those that resource area hopefully it will cover it we'll have to continue to to analyze the metrics on our bandwidth usage and it's possible that we'll have to make another increase at some point okay so these the standard of one gigabytes is down the line somewhere yeah we have a the the hardware that we have in place from Comcast is our internet service provider yep and they've provided us a 1 gigabit fiber drop so oh great we have the ability to continually increase our bandwidth to that standards up to that level without any major construction and overhaul so far that's great that's that's good planning thank you very much Thank You

▶ 1:59:20 Monica C. Medeiros: mr. chairman Thank You alderman Boycelle alderman Medeiros please thank you and in terms of the bandwidth increase you mentioned that this is in part due to the schools having to comply with the online testing is that are you referring to the park test associated with common core curriculum correct yes and are we able to meet the requirements right now in order to yeah we've done some pilot testing this year and we've we've been able to meet the requirements although at times we've had to employ some some bandwidth restriction on certain parts of our network in order to ensure that while the park testing was going on uh that everything ran smoothly and there were no there were no issues with that but this will allow us this upgrade will allow us to make

▶ 2:00:13 Peter D. Mortimer: sure that we comply and are still able to do the rest of what correct yes thank you thank you Thank you, Alderman Medeiros. Seeing no further, Alderman- Motion to move the bottom line, Mr. Chair. Second. Alderman Forbes has made a motion to move the bottom line for budget number 155, information technology, seconded by Alderman Boycelle. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none. Opposed. Excuse me. Eight in favor, one opposed to the informational technology budget. That order will be recommended to the full board for passage. The next budget we have before us is Budget 135. It is the auditor, the chief financial officer, Mr. DelaRusso, is here to represent that budget, $358,029.52.

▶ 2:01:21 Please proceed, Mr. DelaRusso. Thank you. If I may, first and foremost, thank you for letting me be here this evening, another budget year ahead of us, and it's always has its challenges, as it should. First and foremost, the FY17 Office of the Auditor's Budget represents a significant transition year for the department. As was mentioned last year, the department is undergoing a 75% change of staff between 15 and 60, now ultimately in 17. The positions of payroll, accounts payable, and assistant city auditor were seeing retirements. There was a transitional plan in place with the support of the human resources department, which spans both fiscal years to assist in this process. For fiscal year 17, the department budget is 5.6%,

▶ 2:02:29 or $21,244.48 less than what was budgeted for FY16. The salary category has been reduced by $26,264.48 from the original FY16 allocation. All salaries represented here are funded here. Number two, the contractual category of the budget has been increased by $5,000 from the original FY16 allocation in anticipation for consulting services needed to finalize the office transition. The other charges category of the budget continues to be funded at the same level as FY16, and it includes my involvement and professional municipal accounting organizations their support of this budget is most appreciated and I'd be remiss if I didn't think Bridget gain again the assistant city auditor this is we've worked for many many years together and this will be the last

▶ 2:03:36 budget we prepared together so I just want to commend her absolutely phenomenal, and to see all that institutional knowledge leave my office in a year is a challenge right there for me. So, again, I want to thank her and my office staff. They've been exceptionally helpful and supportive during this interesting transition. But thank you, Bridget. Shout out to you. Thank you very much, Mr. De La Russo. President Kahn, please. Yeah, in terms of your Salary lines, Mr. DelRusso, is everybody, all salary and compensation subsumed in this budget, or are there people who are in other locations in the budget? Through the chair, they are all here. And, yeah, we do much appreciate all the individuals who have served so long in your department who are retiring.

▶ 2:04:35 You know, they'll be missed, you know. but um we will soldier on i guess um in terms of the audit service line for your budget is that is that by an annual contract yeah we do have it under contract it'd be that's the same price as it was this will be year uh second year to the last for the contract the price is going to be the same in fy18 there'll be no no increase either and that's for the powers and sullivan firm that's correct and what about your professional services online the seven thousand dollars what does that uh consist of and why uh the the two thousand dollars is essentially to uh is for balance sheet and schedule a through um uh the cpa consulting firm and uh dan sullivan and the other five thousand is in there we anticipate that since it'll be the first year

▶ 2:05:40 Peter D. Mortimer: and we close that we're going to actually ask um bridget gain if she would come back as needed to assist the new assistancy auditor at the cl her first closing ie through munis and also through uh the end of september we actually closed the books per se for the whole fiscal year if as needed okay and do you anticipate compensating her for her services through this line yes they do that's all i have thank you thank you president khan seeing no further alderman wishing to be heard motion to move the bottom line of department 135 second we have a motion to move the auditor's budget budget number 135 by alderman Boisselle duly seconded by alderman lemmerman all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none this budget will be

▶ 2:06:29 recommended to the full board for passage thank you the next budget we have is nine four two it is the stabilization fund in the amount of $100,000 mr. de la Rousseau please thank you this fund represents two distinct funds of the city has the first one is fund number 8401 the regular stabilization fund to the city the balance as of 5 9 was 1 million 749 197 54 just under 1 million 750 this will add if approved another 50 000 bringing it close to 1.8 million dollars in the city's regular stabilization fund the opeb trust fund which is the other post employment benefit trust fund it's actually fund number 8407 the current balance is 199 948 13 just under 200 000 if approved this will bring this just shy under 250 000 this is the first year

▶ 2:07:41 we put these actually up front in the regular budget of the city typically you see these in the fall from free cash i've made a decision to migrate that into the regular operating budget two distinct reasons one is that i i believe that it's going to send a message to standard and pause that we take the funding of our stabilization funds very seriously and that it's more prudent for me in October when we get reviewed to say it's been done than it's our intent to do, particularly with the OPEB trust fund because I think everyone will agree, we've talked about that before, the future health insurance liability obligation is under a lot of scrutiny now and the ability of cities and towns to address it is becoming more and more important so i want to try to be a little bit more upfront

▶ 2:08:50 and advise the outside agencies that we're standing strong and we have a commitment that we're going to continue to fund both of these funds on a regular basis and i think this is a very clear message and i think uh quite frankly the support of the alderman goes a long way when i talk to these people thank you thank you mr delarusso uh president khan yeah um over the years mr del russo uh has been very conservative and he's done a very good job uh in establishing and building up various stabilization funds he's helped us take our general stabilization fund comes to a level that I think is appropriate. He was instrumental in creating a contract stabilization fund which is a great tool that prevents us from having to scramble to fund labor contract awards or arbitration awards or things of that nature.

▶ 2:09:54 One of the things I'm concerned about is it hasn't come into the chamber yet this year, But we hear all kinds of turbulence about some of the other portions of the budget. And if we had a critical need in some other portion of the budget, I think I would rather fund that need for ongoing expenses for this year than to support this order. Nobody has officially told us anything in this chamber other than everything is okay. and that there are no problems and i haven't and i ask these questions and i'm i'm not trying to be coy but um you know doesn't appear to be any austerity move afoot other than our normal budgeting process um i've been tracking you know the city positions that come vacant over the last six months or so and we're filling all positions so

▶ 2:10:56 So nobody's officially telling us that Thorp any problems relative to the budget. I don't believe there are any problems to the budget, but if there were critical needs that weren't being funded in this budget for this year, I would rather fund the critical needs than put $100,000 additional into the stabilization funds. Particularly when OPEB, and I'm not questioning your prudence, but I mean this is not something that's a current mandate. So, for example, if we were told that there were big problems in just to pick a budget, maybe the school budget, and they needed $100,000, I would rather see $100,000 allocated to cover current this year needs, if they exist. And like I said, nobody's told us they exist yet, than to support this order.

▶ 2:11:43 Monica C. Medeiros: um so i i would contemplate either holding this order uh this budget or um i would just be giving my opinion as to what my opinion might be if i'm presented with a set of facts as to what i've outlined down the road before we finalize the budget thank you president khan i guess i stray a little bit off the topic as i tend to do sometimes I'm done now very good Thank You president Khan alderman Medeiros you beat alderman's workout by an instant this will be quick I do understand president Khan's concerns and I think he makes some good points and but at the same time I just want to point out that I am I am pleased that assuming that there are no a stereo you know that Thorp no crises coming up that I

▶ 2:12:43 Michael P. Zwirko: appreciate that this does put in place our intentions about what to do with the funds and I appreciate that so thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros alderman Zwirko please Thank You mr. chairman Thank You Patrick again I have spoken with you in the past about OPEB is a growing concern but echoing the comments of president khan it is currently not a mandate and i'm curious as to um i appreciate the fact that we're using general funds for this i'm curious given it where we've funded it in the past through free cash i actually do feel that ideologically that free cash is a good use of this type of fund in my mind that's what we should be using free cash for predominantly and some other items as

▶ 2:13:34 Michael P. Zwirko: well I'm just curious as to why we didn't use some amount of free cash for this in parallel with even funding it from the general I know that back in April 25th I believe we appropriated a considerable amount of free cash some of that was for overtime other was for contract stabilization cemetery upgrades etc and I've read the rating agencies reports and they specifically draw out OPEB so this is not we are not alone in feeling their focus on this piece by so I'm just curious as to why we decided not to fund some of this through free cash I mean we did in the fall we did fund both funds in this past fall 15 50 we did do that the remaining funds I think is we allocated had taken that into consideration um and i and again my my position and i and i truly understand and

▶ 2:14:38 um all comments and obviously the board's will the board's will but i think where i where i sit i think the um note from standing and poor is one a step further and i think that if i could read a portion for those that haven't had a chance to look at it recently i think it hits home we hit home for me um to the point where i'm hit before you tonight asking we not funded from the traditional methods but that we've shown that we have a more committed um sense uh to to the obligation of the impact of seven on the city it says right here that and it's on page 5 October 23rd of 2015 it's on the website if anyone's interested it says in our opinion a credit weakness in Melrose is large pension and OPEB

▶ 2:15:39 liability without a plan in place that we think will sufficiently address the obligation period. Melrose's combined pension and OPEB contribution totaled 10.4% of total governmental fund expenditures in 2015. Of that amount, 5.7% represented contributions to pension obligations and 4.7% represented OPEB payments. The City made its full required annual pension contribution in 2015, and it says the pension system, the funded ratio was 54%. However, which is, you know, which is, it's good that we're making progress there. As of January 1st, 2014, the city's OPEB, unfunded actuarial liability, is $129.5 million dollars the OPEB in required contributions called the arc was 11.6 million and the city's actual pays ago contribution was 4.4 million so we're

▶ 2:16:53 seven million dollars short of what we're supposed to fund according to the funding schedule city management adopted an OPEB trust fund in fiscal 2014 with the board of alderman approval and as of june 30 2015 the balance in the fund at that time was 125 850 dollars 125 850 excuse me finally the last paragraph overall we believe melrose's budgetary performance will remain pressured by the city's high pension and opeb contributions in the next three to five years in addition while we understand management has established a trust to address the city's opib obligation and will continue to pay a hundred percent of the arc for its pension liability which means we're going to fund the pension at the level that the schedule

▶ 2:17:53 requires we still believe officials lack a credible plan to alleviate the stress these unfunded liabilities will continue to pose on budgetary performance that's frightening because from where I sit when I sit with them again in October to review the next issue not much other than any contributions we approve here in these amounts has changed I fear it that at some point not in the too far off and I'll say three to five years they'll start to downgrade cities and towns which means all pay higher interest rates on our notes and at some point and I'll go on a record this will become a mandate and I think that they have done so much on the accounting side the impact on financial statements i don't see how

▶ 2:18:53 they cannot begin to mandate this in some fashion i don't know if they're going to require a step down or step up approach for funding but at some point i would find it hard to believe that they carry this ball all the way here and then decided to drop the ball and say okay that's as far as we're going to go guys i don't see that happening in my opinion i could be wrong but i just don't see that happening but i appreciate exactly that comment so my objective again was was to try to demonstrate that we're taking it more serious and i think that's a step forward for them to say we're doing what we can which we acknowledge it we accept the responsibility and we'll do the best we can going forward but it is a great concern to me so in a follow-up to that then

▶ 2:19:44 this is not a one-hit wonder i mean you do anticipate funding this again in fiscal years in the future from the general ledger in addition to free cash if available you have a commitment to funding this trust my my objective would be that we fund both trusts through the regular budget process going forward and if when in the event we have the ability to craft more revenues into it even though we won't be able to hit obviously their target at least it will demonstrate an effort which is what they look forward to it's very important they look for an effort no one's gonna say we they don't understand proposition two and a half because we take proposition ten and a half for us to be able to fund this at seven million dollars but what they do

▶ 2:20:32 want to see is that we're not ignoring it and that we're taking it much more serious now until the funding schedule for the pensions is done we have no capacity to reach that figure even then and that's he is down the road so between now and then I just want to do everything I think that we can to show within our resources which are very limited as everyone around the table here knows we're trying our best and hopefully that will help in the long term all I can say and just in a final comment I'm you know in my experience although limited as it may be, you know, crashes happen very quick and growth happens very slow. You know, for the past seven or eight years, we've enjoyed not only here in Melrose and the

▶ 2:21:21 Michael P. Zwirko: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but in the country, we've enjoyed some very good growth. But if you remember the fall of 2008, it was like a precipice. And, you know, while I appreciate this effort and it appears that it will be a continued one, and it is important to obviously have a high bond rating for a whole host of reasons we need levers available to us should the trajectory change and while I will be supporting this it's just it's something to keep an eye out on and to your point you know two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in this trust for a seven million dollar hole while it does show a commitment is essentially a drop in the bucket right so and and I would also like to echo that I would imagine that other cities and towns across the

▶ 2:22:06 Commonwealth are probably worse off if not in similar situations that we are correct and if I made to the chair that is in my association meetings this has become the number one item for conversation number one and I can remember before when there was talk in the background about at the meetings Association said well they really can't do that because they realize we're limited and we don't have the resources given proposition two and a half and I said really let's just wait and see and that's never stopped them yet so again this is now become in my circle I'll be the number one topic I hear talked spoken about is what are we going to do about it thank you those are all the questions I have mr. chairman Thank You mr. de la Rousseau Thank You alderman

▶ 2:22:57 Monica C. Medeiros: Suarco alderman Medeiros please thanks um you know back on some comments and in regard to OPEB I mean I'm very glad that we took the initiative as a city to go ahead and start this trust fund here because there are many cities and towns that do not have one although there are so many that do and I echo that that is really it's it's been very high on the radar for the last several years and you know it's not just that you know we have an obligation to make to make it look like we're making an effort to the bond rate those who rate the bonds but also to our retirees I mean this is a huge cost that you know quite honestly I'm not sure that the way things are going that you know it's going to be difficult

▶ 2:23:42 Monica C. Medeiros: to meet to meet our obligations to our retirees and on the trajectory that health insurance is increasing so you know anything that we can do within our means to start to make sure that we're funding and able to fund our obligation you know we don't know where anything's going to be by the time you know so many of us retire but I think it's a good start and and I just if and I think it's very good to to again show our intentions here and I think in terms of transparency it has been our practice for several years when we do have free cash to you know put money into the stabilization fund and as we've started this OPEB trust fund so I think it's very good to as much as we are able to be transparent about our intentions and make sure it's there can you talk about

▶ 2:24:33 Monica C. Medeiros: the ability for somebody to take take from say the OPEB trust fund now once we deposit money there and allocate money into that fund if we did get into a crisis is that something that we can touch or does that is that really you can you talk about that yeah through the chair my understanding is it would be applicable for health insurance matters the way i think the way this board had passed and then again i i if i'm incorrect i apologize but i think it's my understanding that with the section to which we pass it would provide for relief and should we uh have a need and health insurance cost throughout the year that would be able to access this again only through the board of aldermen approval

▶ 2:25:22 Monica C. Medeiros: Thorp no direct access to any one of these funds without the board of aldermen's approval period and with the uh the stabilization trust fund that's otherwise known as our rainy day fund that's correct that has more flexibility and in fact with the you know the mayor's uh direction and the board of aldermen's approval that could be used for more more items correct it does um the one the only caveat that i just want to put on it is that we there is um a rhyme or reason as to why we try to not utilize those funds god forbid unless it was something catastrophic we tried to maintain a five percent level of of liquidity or reserves i'll call it to demonstrate to these same people that we take that we have some flexibility in the event

▶ 2:26:17 Thorp Alderman Kahn and others have mentioned should something happen so part of the meeting that obligation of at least 5% last year was about 7% we've and our policies here for the city we utilize the stabilization fund plus the free cash that we have available to meet that obligation because that does give us the only additional flexibility that we would have but they look to us every year and they ask all the balances every time we do a financial statement official statement we have to update them to could show them that were committed and I think as I've said before there is no different harm in using the fund just that I think you would always say it should have a plan in place to replace what you take out just to show that your intent has always

▶ 2:27:06 Monica C. Medeiros: been to to do the right thing not use it for one-time expenses without you know some sense of reimbursement and from my years in private finance that you know obviously it's it's good to have reserves in when we're thinking about borrowing and in fact it's a red flag if somebody had to go go use their savings for their daily operating you know household expenditure so I understand that you know we wouldn't want to go to that unless we really needed to thank you Thank You alderman Medeiros alderman Tramontozzi please Thank You mr. chairman you know I I guess the real question is do we have reserves set aside we do there are reserves in the account and Maybe I just don't quite understand it completely,

▶ 2:28:01 John N. Tramontozzi: but I don't really think that we should be running around like Chicken Little and the sky's not falling here. I agree with President Kahn. I think we can hold this. We've got some other budgets to deal with for the rest of the month, and I'd like to see how those budgets go before we decide that the stabilization account needs to be funded at this time. So I don't think I'm going to support it now. I'd like to see it being held, and I'll make a motion to hold it at this time and then revisit it as we proceed with the rest of the budget. I'd like to make that motion at this time. Very good, Alderman Tramontozzi. There were no other motions on the floor, so your motion is in order. Alderman Tramontozzi has made a motion to hold Budget 942, Stabilization Fund.

▶ 2:29:04 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I'd second that motion. And President Kahn. We almost got through this meeting without saying the T word. President Kahn has seconded the motion to hold this budget. Is there further discussion? Alderman Wright, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate Alderman Tramontozzi motion. However, only thing we will be doing tonight is recommending it for final passage. And if something comes up in the meantime, before we actually vote on this budget, we certainly could revisit it. I'm prepared as we have in years past to support this. I think the auditor has made a compelling argument as to why we want to do this. And I don't want to be reacting to something we haven't heard yet. If Thorp concerns about the budget, then let's talk about them.

▶ 2:30:03 Francis X. Wright Jr.: But if we haven't heard anything that's concerning to us, I'm not sure why we're running away from this. So I would prefer that we wait until we hear something. And then when the time comes at the end to make cuts, that we make appropriate cuts, if any. and tonight we can decide whether or not based on what we know thus far if we want to support this we've heard the arguments otherwise we have to revisit this whole matter again and I think we've spent a good half hour on it tonight unless again I'm starting to repeat myself it's 10 o'clock that unless Thorp some reason to revisit it I think we move forward take a vote on on it goes recommended or not and as we learn more over the next few weeks we

▶ 2:30:54 can we can make a final decision on this and everything else we voted to recommend at the time of the final budget hearing and the the our final vote on the budget so with that I'll I'll stop talking thank you very much alderman wright president khan please yeah well number one we can't discuss budgets until they get to us so we will discuss all budgets as they come to us number two historically we make and approve motions to hold i can't remember any budget year that we have not Thorp nothing wrong with doing that uh it's up to the will of the board i have no problem one way or the other i'm going to vote the way i feel is appropriate but holding a budget is appropriate it's not hiding from anything it's not ignoring anything we will discuss problems with the budget if they

▶ 2:31:58 Peter D. Mortimer: exist as they come before us and i move the question on the motion to hold um thank you President Kahn for your discussion point. At this point, President Kahn has made a motion to move the question. For some of you who are maybe new, what that means is that an affirmative vote on President Kahn's motion to move the question, it's an intervening motion, means that no further discussion will be permitted. It is not a final vote on the motion to hold the main motion on the floor right now is a motion to hold by alderman Tramontozzi seconded by president khan what we are voting on right now if Thorp a second was there a second on the motion to move the uh move the question second we have a second on the motion to move

▶ 2:32:52 Peter D. Mortimer: the question that will forestall any further discussion all in favor of the motion to move the question please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none what that means is now all further discussion has been prohibited and we are now ready for the main motion made by alderman Tramontozzi which is a motion to hold this budget all in favor of the motion to hold this budget please say aye aye I think I heard three may I see a show of hands please all right we have three eyes on the motion to hold the budget all opposed opposed I see one two three four five six all right so the motion to hold this budget on the stabilization fund fails and the order is presently before you motion to recommend the bottom line where the discussion is

▶ 2:33:55 Peter D. Mortimer: now permitted but I don't think there is any so motion to recommend the bottom line of account nine four two we have a motion to recommend the bottom line for the stabilization fund budget number nine four two second seconded by alderman Forbes by a nose all in favor please say aye aye any opposed opposed with the same three opposed so that is a vote of five and that is a majority of the people present but not a majority of the committee so it does pass yes so that That order to recommend this budget does pass. So the stabilization fund budget number 942 will be recommended to the full board for passage. Motion to adjourn. Thank you very much. Second. We have a motion to adjourn by Alderman Boisselle.

▶ 2:35:01 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you very much, Mr. De La Russo. Seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, we are adjourned. Thank you, one and all.

Original documents

• Minutes (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Other (CivicClerk PDF)
• This meeting on the city portal